Monday, July 17, 2006

Remarriage - The unpardonable sin? (2)

Most churches act as though the unforgivable sin "getting remarried after a divorce".

Former homosexuality with multiple partners or bestiality in the most debased actions is no problem for the church! Come on in, get saved, get delivered, go to bible school. We'll give you a nice pulpit to preach to nice people - But boy you better not have been legally committed to anyone before!! Better not even think of getting re-married if you've been subjected to the horrors of divorce !!!

How anyone can believe that the punishment, for having been sincerely & legally committed in marriage and then gone through the barbed wire of divorce, is a life of stark loneliness - alone and without any more right to ever love or be loved again is far beyond me.

If that is the God you see in the bible then you're not seeing rightly at all - not no way, not no how.

There will be chastisements coming to the church for this ungodly behavior towards the victims of betrayal, violence and divorce.

Does all this mean that we should just permit divorce and remarriage anyway anytime ? Of course not - it's our duty to try to save a marriage if possible - but there are cases where it is literally impossible because God won't interfere with another humans will !!

It must be a case by case scenario where both the Word, the circumstances and simple good old common sense are applied.

Thank God for people like Braun who dared go against the evil traditional vein and speak out against the unpardonable sin being called remarriage!

Some of the most spirit filled, gifted and godly people I ever met in any church were remarried people who went through the hell of betrayal and divorce.

There are also times when divorce actually becomes the duty of a christian!

You cannot live with someone who sleeps all around and call that a christian testimony - it is anything but - and is usually called stupidity due to bad religion.

It is the right and the duty of a believer to divorce a marriage partner who has become habitually unfaithful - after proper efforts have been made to redeem the marriage of course - and who refuses to change.

When adultery has been committed by one partner the "one flesh" union has been severely broken into more than one flesh - the betrayed partner needs to pray over the situation and apply forgiveness but that doesn't mean they have to continue to let themselves be betrayed over and over!! That's just plain idiocy.

Sexual, conjugal betrayal is one of the deepest psychological, emotional pains humans can experience.

It is in itself an act of violence against the betrayed partner.

Why should the betrayed partner have to suffer the ball and chain punishment of remaining alone and lonely until that other unfaithful or brutal slimey rat dies!?!

There is more than one way to die. I've seen people literally change personalities in some couples. A death of the union is almost always the outcome when the said changed spouse "dies" to their former self, and then goes on to other partners in adultery.

People change. Some life events can change a person to the point of their becoming unrecognizable to their former self. That's a fact and is common when a beloved child dies in the marriage. In fact something like 75% of couples who live through a infant death end up in divorce. Only those who have lived it can understand it. So blindly applying some isolated bible verse to them without any love or understanding is sin!

75% of all couples - christian or not - that have watched their beloved child die, go through such titanic inner trauma that they can literally change personalities. One ends up living with someone they do not know - a perfect stranger. Divorce is the inevitable outcome whenever that changed person decides they don't love you anymore.

Change is not always for the better in couples. Yes redemption exists, not only for one gone astray but for the one left behind to suffer the sting of betrayal and rejection - both from the guilty spouse AND from the church!

I ask, did Jesus apply the Law as to stone the adulteress? It was the Law! The written Word of which He was the incarnation! It was the only scriptural action and option He had. Well ?? (BTW, where was the man in that case?!)

So I plead with all readers. Do not stone divorcees and re-marrieds! Do not tell them they cannot love again.The way these things have been blindly applied in the past is in clear contradiction to the whole concept of both forgiveness and justice.

A person that has been forced into divorce for no fault of their own and against their will, or a person who has found divorce the only solution to living with an unfaiful and abusive spouse has nothing to be ashamed of !!! It was not their doing, anymore than when a child dies of cancer it is the fault of the parents. Is it justice to punish those then with ball and chain to a partner who will go sleep and live with whoever they wish?

Another pastor friend of mine - with a Phd in theology - saw his wife die of cancer. He later got remarried to a divorced christian woman. Wrong you say? Ha!

That woman married a man who she found out soon after was a homosexual!! The man - a bible college student - clearly deceived her! Would you even call that a legitimate marriage? I would not. And I highly doubt God does.

Think about that. There are hundreds of circumstances that we cannot understand nor judge - case by case is the true rule - otherwise we continue to do what we have always done as the church - PUNISH the suffering !

Rejection of remarried christians - from ministry or other - is wrong. It doesn't ring true of the God who said that "mercy triumphs over judgment."